Monthly Archives: April 2011

Social media can work wonders for your brand, but it can also spell disaster. A colleague recently asked me for a list of examples of where the wrong post or tweet has damaged a brand’s reputation. I had a few examples on the top of my head, but thought I would do some extra research on the side to see what else I could find.

After some research, I produced a deck titled “Social Media 101: Social Media Disasters”. I’ve loaded the deck to Slideshare and have embedded it here:

Examples of bad social media can be tracked back to a focus on social media governance by companies.

Lack of real-time monitoring

Not responding to customer concerns

Lack of corporate social media policies

Employees not trained in company policies

Lack of professional Social Media managers

Too much focus on self-promotion (lack of relationship building)

Lack of due diligence before launching social campaigns

We can all learn from these mistakes.

Having a social media presence that represents your brand means responding quickly and directly.

You need to plan for the worst while expecting the best.

A professional and responsible manager should be in charge of all communication on the various sites and this person should be very well versed on the many risks of social media.

All employees are potential spokesmen for your brand. They (including executives) should be trained in the basics of good and bad social media communications.

There is a risk to participating in social media, just like there is a risk with any other channel or method used for external communications. Smart companies acknowledge that risk, but have focused on limiting that risk by hiring professional social media managers on staff, putting in place proper social media guidelines, and ensuring that employee and management alike are trained in how to best represent the brand when participating in social media.

This report has staying power as it has been released every year since 2002. Each year, the report identifies six emerging technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on higher education in the next one to five years. The format of the report stays consistent every year, but the process to arrive at the six emerging technologies keeps improving.

The report presents an overview of each of the six technologies accompanied by examples and suggested readings for each technology. Below I provide my summary of the six emerging summaries. I’ve also embedded a video (3:30) that provides you with an overview from the NMC team.

The areas of emerging technology cited for 2011 are:

Timeframe: The Next 12 months…

Electronic books: The Horizon Report mentions that e-books have taken hold strongly in the consumer sector and the time for mass adoption across campuses is now. This trend has been strongly enabled by the explosion of tablet computing, which can augment text with interactive experiences, support classroom note-taking and research activities, and allow readers to interact socially. This trend will totally change our perception of what it means to read.

Mobiles (i.e., mobile devices). Mobiles enable ubiquitous access to information, social networks, tools for learning and productivity, and much more. 2011 will bring new interfaces and new apps that leverage location-awareness. The mobile device of is a versatile tool that can be easily adapted to a host of tasks for learning, productivity, and social networking.

Timeframe: Next 1-3 years….

Augmented reality, enables content providers the ability to provide additional information to what ever users are viewing on a screen device. This information is ‘layered’ over the whatever the user is viewing at the time (e.g. whether in the real world, or on a screen). While most applications have been in the consumer sector (tourism is one application example)), we can expect new applications to become available over the nest 1-3 years that will enhance learning. Augmented reality brings a significant potential to supplement information delivered via computers, mobile devices, video, and even the printed book.

Game-based learning continues to grow as an application area that can enhance learning for students of all ages. We should expect to see a whole new suite of emerging game and simulation-based applications that are developed expressly to enhance the learning process. The report says that perhaps the greatest potential of games for learning lies in their ability to foster collaboration, problem-solving, and procedural thinking.

Timeframe: 4-5 years…

Gesture-based computing technologies continue to evolve. Gone is the day of interacting with the computer via just a keyboard or a mouse. Gestures allow the motions of the body to control computing devices. The next generation of students entering higher education will have grown accustomed to interacting with computers and gaming systems via touching, tapping, swiping, jumping, and moving. The Horizon Report specifically mentions new interface technologies such as Kinect, SixthSense, and Tamper, which make interactions with computational devices far more intuitive and embodied.

Learning analytics employs a combination of data-gathering tools and analytic techniques to study student engagement, performance, and progress in practice. The goal is not just to understand the past, but to help predict the future. This technology trend area will help administrators and teachers revise curricula, teaching, and assessment in real time. Learning analytics will allow educational institutions to tailor education to individual students more effectively.

On May 9-11 the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) comes to my neck of the woods (Chicago). The event is the “School of WOM: The Art & Science of Creating Talkable Brands”. You can check out the event and register at http://womma.org/schoolofwom/about.html

I’m on the speaking agenda along with my colleague Susan Emerick (@sfemerick) and our friend and colleague, Chris Boudreaux and (@cboudreaux) SVP of Management Consulting, of IBM’s strategic partner, Converseon. We will be speaking on May 9, Tuesday afternoon. Our topic is entitled “IBM: Empowering Employees to Participate in Online Conversations. We’ll discuss how we’ve developed an ongoing social listening and engagement process within IBM designed to enable IBM employees to become active in the social conversations happening everyday. Hope to see you there.

The School of WOM event has a jam-packed schedule of presentations from brand names you all know, including:

A few weeks ago I started publishing The HorizonWatching Daily via paper.li. I thought I’d give it a try and so far I like it.

It takes the links those I am following on Twitter and pulls those stories into a newspaper-like format. Most of those I am following are professional futurists or have something to do with emerging trends, technologies and business issues. Thanks to all those I am following for their link-sharing and content.

The World Future Society Outlook 2011 report was released about 6 months ago, but I came across it again today and thought it would be a good post for my readers.

The video below is 4 minutes long and provides a summary of the top 10 forecasts from the World Future Society.

Every year the WFS Outlook report (published by the The Futurist Magazine) examines the key trends in technology, the environment, the economy, etc and provides a summary of top ten forecasts for the coming year. You can access these forecasts at http://www.wfs.org/Forecasts_From_The_Futurist_Magazine

4. Will there be garbage wars in the future? Trash producers in the developed world will ship much more of their debris to repositories in developing countries.

5. The notion of class time as separate from non-class time will vanish.

6. The future is crowded with PhDs.

7. Cities in developed countries could learn sustainability from so-called slums in the developing world. Dwellers of "slums," favelas, and ghettos have learned to use and reuse resources and commodities more efficiently than their wealthier counterparts.

10. We may not be able to move mountains with our minds, but robots will await our mental commands.

All of these forecasts plus dozens more were included in the report that was published in The Futurist Magazine. In fact, The Futurist, has also made public the contents from Outlook 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. You can access these forecasts at http://www.wfs.org/Forecasts_From_The_Futurist_Magazine